With Ryanair still making headlines for cancelling two per cent of its flights over the next six weeks, CEO Michael O’Leary hinted at plans to ease customer relations and prevent further cancellations at the company’s AGM this week.
According to Sky News, O’Leary announced a recruitment drive to hire 120 new pilots within “the next week or two”. The news comes after he said in a speech at the event that the company might have to axe more flights and allegedly commented that he could resort to forcing pilots to defer a week’s holiday until 2018.
On Wednesday, The Guardian reported that it had obtained a letter from Ryanair pilots in which they rejected an offer of a £12,000 bonus in exchange for cancelling their holidays, instead calling on their employer to negotiate better contract terms. The airline’s pilots aren’t currently part of a union.
O’Leary commented at the AGM that he “would challenge any pilot to explain how this is a difficult job or how it is they are overworked”. He added that bosses were in discussions about new perks for staff, “but if pilots misbehave, that would be the end of the discussion”.
Regardless of what happens in the next few weeks, Ryanair said in a statement earlier this week that it had already been in contacted with up to 315,000 customers affected by the cancellations that have been announced.